The biggest news of the past 10 days: President Obama launched the first sorties into Syria, targeting ISIS terrorists. Within 24 hours, however, Republicans everywhere decided to turn an awkward salute into a near-impeachable crime against humanity, thus violating one of their most sacred rules from the Bush administration era: never criticize the commander-in-chief during wartime. Here's just another friendly reminder of what I thought was the rule about this kind of behavior (note that O'Reilly and Hannity have been especially critical of Obama):

"You don't criticize the commander-in-chief in the middle of a firefight. That could be construed as putting U.S. forces in jeopardy and undermining morale."

--Bill O'Reilly, April, 2004

"I've held this in long enough. I really suspect that these liberal tactics are damaging, maybe even killing the morale of our troops."

--Rush Limbaugh, 6/14/07

"The only ideas that they espouse are ways to undermine the troops in harm's way and undermine their commander in chief while they're at war. Your candidates have no idea how to keep this economy strong."

...and I said "yes." First show will be next Saturday night. They stream from the Web so I will be both bad AND nationwide.

Unfortunately, I can't post any details here, because as we know, there are lurking freeper stalker assholes who like to read DU posts and then go back to their lurking freeper stalker asshole Websites and post things about what you had for lunch today because you revealed too much "personal information." I had a couple of DUers send me PMs once when that happened. Since then, no "personally identifiable" stuff posted here.

But I did want to share good news with you, and to send a shout-out to Mr. Scorpio. I check in with DU sporadically these days so I am not sure if he is still doing a show, but if he is, I invite him to promote it in this thread.

The enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they've cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly attempting to buy Congress and the White House. Their political network helped finance the Tea Party and powers today's GOP. Koch-affiliated organizations raised some $400 million during the 2012 election, and aim to spend another $290 million to elect Republicans in this year's midterms. So far in this cycle, Koch-backed entities have bought 44,000 political ads to boost Republican efforts to take back the Senate.

What is less clear is where all that money comes from. Koch Industries is headquartered in a squat, smoked-glass building that rises above the prairie on the outskirts of Wichita, Kansas. The building, like the brothers' fiercely private firm, is literally and figuratively a black box. Koch touts only one top-line financial figure: $115 billion in annual revenue, as estimated by Forbes. By that metric, it is larger than IBM, Honda or Hewlett-Packard and is America's second-largest private company after agribusiness colossus Cargill. The company's stock response to inquiries from reporters: "We are privately held and don't disclose this information."

But Koch Industries is not entirely opaque. The company's troubled legal history – including a trail of congressional investigations, Department of Justice consent decrees, civil lawsuits and felony convictions – augmented by internal company documents, leaked State Department cables, Freedom of Information disclosures and company whistle­-blowers, combine to cast an unwelcome spotlight on the toxic empire whose profits finance the modern GOP.

Under the nearly five-decade reign of CEO Charles Koch, the company has paid out record civil and criminal environmental penalties. And in 1999, a jury handed down to Koch's pipeline company what was then the largest wrongful-death judgment of its type in U.S. history, resulting from the explosion of a defective pipeline that incinerated a pair of Texas teenagers.

Kind of Pantera with the moody overtones of Soundgarden...some of the songs are kind of thrash-y metal, but I'm hearing some Soundgarden and maybe also some Foo Fighters in this band's mission statement.